大象传媒

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change鈥檚 latest report came out earlier this week, focusing on the action that needs to be taken globally to mitigate the impact of a warming climate. It says agriculture, land-use and forestry can all help provide large-scale emissions reductions, but cannot completely compensate for any delayed action on reducing emissions in other sectors, such as industry and travel. The report also points out that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in just three years鈥� time, and then reduce by 43 percent by 2030. It highlights that methane - a major emission from livestock farming - would need to be reduced by a third during that same timeframe.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about planting trees to offset carbon emissions - which this week, the Welsh Affairs Committee has warned will impact family farms in Wales. The committee says it 鈥榬ecognised the importance of woodland to tackle the climate emergency,鈥� but 鈥榯hat companies could be attempting to 鈥済ame the system鈥� by investing in farming land to offset emissions which is then lost to Welsh agriculture鈥�.

The Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee has been investigating the impact the lack of staff is having on farms, food processing and distribution, and is critical of what it says is the government鈥檚 failure to engage in the labour shortage problem. MPs from the EFRA committee have warned that a failure to tackle labour shortages 鈥榳ill permanently shrink the food sector.鈥�

And all this week on Farming Today we鈥檝e been talking about farmers leaving the industry. We hear from arable farmer Henry DuVal in Hampshire about how he passed the farm onto his son Ed by setting up a bio-gas plant, where instead of growing crops for food, all their fields are producing fuel for anaerobic digestion. Most of the methane they produce goes into the gas grid, some makes electricity.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced for 大象传媒 Audio by Caitlin Hobbs